common
French soldier and in that of his commanding officer. The keen
analysis of the characters he portrays enables us humanly to
understand the catastrophe on the plains of Sedan. The whole Second
Empire undermined by corruption; the army, head and front, honeycombed
with loose morals, favoritism, and boundless conceit,--we begin to
perceive the main reasons underlying the utter defeat of a gallant
nation. And this all the more when, side by side with the sombre
painting of Zola, we read the God-fearing letters written home from
the reeking battlefields by William I. and his Iron Chancellor.

Indeed, when the conquering German legions returned, in the spring of
1871, to their own firesides, they presented a body of men of whom any
nation might have been proud. Elated they were at their unparalleled
successes, but not puffed-up or vainglorious.

A generation has passed since then. Is the German army of to-day still
of the same metal? Does it, as a body, still show the same sterling
qualities which led it to victory after victory on the soil of France?

Alas, no. On that point the best and clearest minds in Germany itself
are agreed. Foreign military leaders who have had opportunity to watch
the German soldier of to-day at play and at work, have sent home
reports to their respective governments, saying: "These are not the
men that won in 1870!"

A couple of years ago several American officers of high rank, fresh
from the Philippines, witnessed the great autumn manoeuvres of the
German army, conducted under the supreme command of William II. One of
them, after viewing in stark amazement the senseless attacks of whole
cavalry divisions up steep declivities or down slippery embankments,
exposed all the while to a withering fire from the rifles of infantry
masses, said to the present writer: "If this were actual war, not a
horse or man would be left alive!"

In the Reichstag, the national parliament of Germany, many have been
the heated debates and scorching has been the bitter satire passed
during recent years upon the German army of to-day. And not only the
solid phalanx of Socialists did the criticising on such occasions, but
also not a few members of every other party, even including those of
the Conservative Faction, composed of men who are the very
representatives of the caste from which the Empire's corps of officers
have sprung.

The German newspaper press has sounded of late years, again and again,
the not